Well we're back from Portugal and back to warmer weather too, which is a nice surprise. So with little time to make something this week before the Linky closes I've opted to make ice cream.
So it's pretty handy the weather's good! I'm sure we'll still manage to taste some though even if it rains!
This recipe comes from an old and sun-faded Bill Granger book titled Holiday, somehow it just seemed an appropriate book to browse through this week.
The recipe actually uses raspberries but I had some blueberries so I've used those instead. I say a recipe, there's only three ingredients: caster sugar, Greek yogurt and the fruit, so it does feel like a bit of a cheat.
Although the purpose of this challenge was to use more of my cookbooks so as it's still meeting that requirement I'll continue...
One thing I'm struck by though is how often I find myself saying I already had an ingredient (or a similar one) when writing these posts so it seems this challenge is really pushing me to use the ingredients I have in ways I perhaps wouldn't usually. I'm pretty sure that's a good thing, so thank you Mary.
All you do for this yogurt ice cream is whisk 100g of caster sugar with 500g of Greek yogurt and then add 115g of fruit. Yes, it's really that simple. I decided to add some chopped mint too, though afterwards I thought perhaps lemon verbena might have been a better match with the blueberries. Oh well, it's mint this time round.
Next it was into the ice cream maker. That's where I deviated again as my ice cream maker bowl wasn't frozen in preparation so I'm using the more manual churn method of stirring every so often to prevent crystals appearing while it freezes. I'm expecting it to take a bit longer and it is more disruptive but with the kitchen timer set every 20-30 minutes, I'm hoping it'll work.
In the book Bill says that "home-made ice creams are always best when they're freshly churned" while I tend to agree with him I'm not sure I fancy whipping up some ice cream for two people on a regular basis.
There's also a warning that this ice cream can become fairly solid in the freezer, so to take it out 20 minutes before serving. Right, got that.
The verdict:
- It was easy to do, and I could easily make more ice cream rather than buying it.
- I added a couple of sprigs of chopped mint, I think I could have added more without getting to mint overload.
- It was a pretty colour, I kept the fruit whole but it would be worth trying with some of the fruit mashed or puréed.
